


Perseverance

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [36]
Category: Glee
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 05:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13495848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: Timmy's been asked by his best (and only) friend to be his best man at his wedding, and he's overjoyed by it, but when he realizes his role implies also writing a speech to be read in front of a crowd he starts panicking. Alex honestly doesn't understand why, how hard can reading a speech be?, but Timmy's got a sectet to motivate his anxiety, and it is time to let it out.





	Perseverance

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a spin-off sequel for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that, despite not being properly set after BHS (but that's only because BHS is probably never going to have a proper ending and we'll keep talking about these people forever), it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler.  
>  Written for this week's M2 at Lande di Fandom's Clash of the Writing Titans, prompt: perseverance - as the title suggests. Also very loosely based on prompt #73 (narrative) at this year's Maritombola.

Despite his good-hearted nature and innate charm, Timmy doesn't have many friends. That is mostly because he's not really a friendly person – he's kind and he's always willing and ready to help people in need, but he loves his loneliness, like any old farmer. He loves spending time on his own on the fields and looking after his animals, he loves to go back home when it's dark and silent and rest with Alex's only company and he loves to wake up first in the morning and get out when the rest of the world is still asleep, because he likes the sounds of nature more than he likes the sounds of people.

Ever since Alex met him, and he was only a child, he has never seen Timmy with a friend that he hadn't acquired through someone else. He's seen him hanging out with a few of Santana's friends, every now and then, but that's what they were, _Santana's friends_ , not his own. And he's friendly with Neri and his family, but he sees them only rarely, and they were Alex's friends first, not his.

The only exception to this is, of course, Bran.

Branwell Stockridge is Timmy’s oldest and only friend. The two things that define him the most in Alex’s opinion are that he’s one of those modern heroes convinced that humanity’s better than the way it seems and that it’s his civic duty to help each and every human being on this earth reach their full potential to show that, and that he’s obscenely covered in money and won’t hesitate to use it to the point of ridiculously wasting it away on lost crusades to prove the first point.

Timmy and him met in kindergarten. Blaine always wanted the best schools for his powder puff, and that’s how Timmy ended up sharing a plastic medieval castle in the garden with the only son of Bertram Stockridge, philosopher, philanthropist, acclaimed essayist and local politician by that time hitting the headlines because of a brave and scandalous law proposition attempting to raise women’s minimum wage so that it – shocking! – matched men’s. 

The way Timmy always told the tale, it seemed that every time Bran entered the room the sun disappeared, blinded by his inner light. Yes, even back when Bran was two and wore a diaper as big as his head. So Timmy was sitting on the carpeted floor, trying to fit a star-shaped block in his own mouth instead than inside the star-shaped hole in a box, when Bran walked in, turned a placid light gray look around and then instantly started running towards him flailing his arms, waving two rattles, one for each hand, and screaming as if he wanted to find a way to vomit his own lungs.

He had then proceeded to bump Timmy in the head repeatedly with the rattles, and then he had said: “there!”, pointing his chubby fingers to the star-shaped hole. Timmy, still confused and a little hurt by the unprecedented assault, had timidly pushed the star-shaped block through its proper hole, and only when Bran had heard the block hit the floor with a numb thud he had finally smiled, satisfied and content.

Timmy must’ve decided that he was trustworthy, reliable and a wise choice in terms of people he could trust to help him find his way when he felt lost and didn’t know what to do, and he never left his side from that day on.

Naturally, that was bound to be over, at some point. They did their best never to separate for much too long all through elementary, middle and high school, but of course they were built for much different lives, and those lives had to take over, eventually. Bran wanted to be an activist first and a politician after that. Timmy wanted to be a sportsman first and a farmer after that, and simply farming wouldn’t have been enough, no, he had to retire in a remote ranch in the countryside and lead his life there, only occasionally seeing his parents and very rarely seeing anyone else.

They had to unglue from one another. And as much as Timmy always tried never to let out when he was in real emotional pain, believing it wasn’t much manly to do so, square as he is, God bless him, Alex always knew he missed Bran, and that distance cut him deeper than he wanted to show. 

Despite that, Bran and him always kept in contact, somehow. Which is a miracle in and of itself, because Timmy’s very close to the people he has around, in his vicinity, but tends not to be able to invest as much in long-distance relationships. Alex knows that very well, because he still remembers the long summers they spent glued to each other in his dad’s farm in Tuscany, and he remembers equally well, like a wound that still burns and refuses any healing, how painful it was to see him completely disappear from any and every radar every time he flew back to Lima – and, eventually, to Santana.

Magically, though, he never really lost touch with Bran – Alex suspects because Bran is always the first trying to contact him. Timmy’s capable of very deep and totalizing love feelings, but when keeping in touch is concerned he is a disaster. Sometimes, even now, when one of them is forced to be away from the other for a few days, he has to remember he has to be the one to call Timmy at least once a day, or chances are they won’t even exchange a few words before he’s back at the farm.

Bran found a way to keep himself up to date with everything happening in Timmy’s life, and he’s the kind of person who likes to share what he’s doing with the people he loves, whether he’s in China chaining himself to yet another factory exposed for exploiting child labor or he’s in Somalia touring rural villages trying to teach the men about the dangers of female circumcision. They text at least once a day and they hear each other over the phone for an extensive catch-up session once a week, and that’s how they managed to keep some of their closeness despite the passing of time, the fact that they’re rarely ever on the same soil anymore and Timmy’s tendency to close himself off from people he hasn’t seen in a good deal of time.

It doesn’t surprise Alex, then, that now that Bran’s getting married he asked Timmy to be his best man. It makes sense, it makes Timmy happy – and it was really nice to catch a glimpse of such happiness on Timmy’s face when he came back home last night and found him completely covered in mud and piglets, smiling from one ear to the other, so eager to tell him the good news he had to start again twice because he kept messing up the words and nothing intelligible managed to come out of his mouth.

What’s surprising is that all of that happiness seems to be completely gone, now, and Alex cannot understand why.

Timmy and him have met Delilah and they both loved her, so he highly doubts Timmy’s sudden unhappiness could come from realizing all of a sudden that he doesn’t like his best friend’s fiancée so much, after all. Actually, Alex can’t imagine Delilah to be a reason for unhappiness in any case, with those shiny and curly, ridiculously long copper hair and those freckles sprinkled all over her pale spirit-of-the-forest face, and her positive, hard-working attitude compensating for a hyperactivity that does sometimes prove itself to be quite difficult to bear for more than fifteen minutes at a time. She’s the perfect companion for Bran – honest, idealistic and bright, together they will sail the oceans and travel the world to save people in need, cure the plague, solve world hunger or whatever else it is that people like them do all day. 

Alex knows Timmy knows that. So he’s pretty sure Delilah’s not the reason for the sudden gloom. And yet there must be a reason – Timmy simply isn’t the kind of person getting all moody and brooding over nothing.

“Baby?” he tries discreetly, sitting next to him on the couch and gathering his legs underneath his ass, “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah…” Timmy mutters, but the way he drags the words is on its own enough to know nothing is alright at all. So Alex clears his throat and insists.

“You look sad.”

“No,” Timmy sighs, shaking his head, “I’m not sad.”

The way he said it, aware and confident, makes Alex think this must be the right path to follow. Timmy always knows what the problem is, whenever he’s got one. He just needs help expressing it in English. “Then how do you feel?”

Timmy tilts his head, for a moment he seems to really be thinking about it, analyzing himself in search of an honest answer.

“I’m worried,” he finally says. Alex backs off a couple of inches, blinking rapidly.

“Worried about what?”

Another short silence, and then another sigh. “I realized something.”

Alex closes his eyes for a second and counts to ten. He mustn’t lose his patience. He knows how Timmy is. He knows talking feelings with him 90% of the time means dragging the words out of his mouth with pincers.

“What did you realize?”

Timmy raises his eyes on him and swallows briefly, before finally confessing. “I will have to write a speech. For the wedding.”

Alex blinks a couple of times again. Okay. He can understand how this might be putting some pressure on Timmy. It’s never easy to write the best man speech. Sometimes Alex thinks about how will it be to write one for Neri, when the right time comes, and he feels genuinely terrified. You’re always worried you’ll end up saying something dull and insignificant, that no one will listen, no one will laugh, and you’ll be a disappointment for your best friend. That’s definitely a rational cause for concern.

He leans in, placing a hand on the inside of Timmy’s elbow, sharing some warmth as he comes closer and kisses him on his chin. “Baby, don’t worry,” he says reassuringly, “You’ll manage something. Nice things to say will come to you soon enough. There’s still a few months to the wedding, you can certainly—”

“But I know what to say,” Timmy interrupts him, breaking the flow of his perfectly planned train of comfort, “That’s not the problem.”

“…oh.” Back to square one, then. “And what is it?”

“That it’s a lot,” Timmy nervously explains, looking down and torturing the tassel of a pillow with his fingers, “I can’t learn it by heart, not even in eight months. I will have to read it.”

“Well, I understand that it would look and sound better if you could make the speech without reading, but—”

“That’s not the problem!”

“Oh, Jesus, Timmy!” Alex finally loses his temper, “If nothing is the problem, _what_ is the problem?!”

Timmy falls silent for a second, still looking at Alex, his lips tightly squeezed into a thin, pale line. 

“I’m worried…” he finally says, “That if I read in front of so many people, I’ll get confused, and I’ll mess up.”

“Baby, come on!” Alex sighs, getting closer to him again, calming down now that Timmy seems open to start discussing this problem like an adult once again, “What if you lose the page for a second? A joke, a quick read and you’ll be back in the flow of the speech. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard. Once you know what to say, the hardest part is over.”

“Not for me,” he simply answer, and he looks down, and in the brief moment Alex manages to catch a glimpse of his eyes he sees something in the back of them that he’s rarely ever seen in Timmy.

Shame.

He frowns. This isn’t normal. It needs to be investigated further.

“Love,” he says patiently, basically sitting on his lap for closeness and to try and capture his eyes with his own once again, “What are you trying to tell me?”

Timmy doesn’t answer right away – once again, there’s shame in his eyes, embarrassment, and Alex finds out he doesn’t like seeing him like this. Timmy’s always been confident in himself, in the way he talked and acted and in the way he carried himself both in front of the others and when he was alone. It’s one of the most magnetic traits of his personality, the fact that it doesn’t matter if he’s out of his element or well within his comfort zone, he always knows what he’s doing and what he’s saying and nothing can ever shake the absolute, totalizing trust he has on his own instinct, knowledge of himself and abilities. That’s always been clear, even in his body language, even in the smallest things – Alex still remembers him a decade ago, a glorious eighteen years old boy with the looks of a demigod and the energy of thunder, and all he had to do, even walking streets he didn’t know, packed with people speaking a language he didn’t understand a syllable of, was smiling, to make the world stop revolving on its axis and start revolving around him.

“Back when I was a kid…” he finally starts out in a low voice, “I was diagnosed with dyslexia.”

The revelation is so absurdly unexpected Alex falls completely silent. He doesn’t feel prepared to even draw breath. His boyfriend. The man he’s been together on and off since he was fourteen, the only boy he’s ever loved since he was two years old, the person he’s been sharing a life and a house for the last five full years is dyslexic, and he had _no idea_.

“How is this possible?”

Timmy turns back towards him, blinking cautiously. “Well, I don’t know. The doctor always said it wasn’t a trauma or anything that caused it, I was just born like this. I had troubles keeping up in school and I couldn’t read very well, so dad brought me to the doctor and he said—”

“No— How is it possible that I didn’t know about it?!”

Timmy’s mouth hangs open halfway through a word for a little while. Then he closes it and swallows. “I don’t like talking about it.”

“Right, ‘cause we only and always talk about things we like, no serious conversations about displeasing topics between us, ever. After all, it’s not like we live together!”

“Can you please not get angry about this?”

“I’m not angry!” But he realizes how his yelling could be an opposite sign, so he forces himself to calm down, breathe deep and try to forget the fact that his life partners has lived with a major, officially diagnosed issue for his entire life and he never thought it might be nice to share it with him. “I’m not angry,” he repeats in a lower voice, “I just don’t understand why wouldn’t you tell me about it.”

“I’m telling you now, am I not?”

“Yes, after almost fifteen years! About time!”

“Alex—” Timmy makes a pause, pinching the root of his nose and asking for silence for a second. Alex allows that because he needs a second too. They’re never gonna get anywhere if he keeps holding this against him. Even though he deserves it. “Please. I’m sorry I never told you. I was ashamed about it. I liked that you thought I was perfect and I didn’t want to put that in danger.”

“Ah, that’s just like you, so arrogant and full of yourself. I never thought you were perfect, for your information. On the contrary, I’ve always seen your flaws from up close and I know them better than anyone else in the world, believe me.” He stops attacking him and bites at his bottom lip, watching Timmy look down miserably. Something melts on his heart and he sighs, looking down too. “And I wouldn’t have thought this to be one of them. This is a condition, not a flaw. The only reason why I wish you’d have told me is that I hate not to know bits and pieces of you, and also that I would’ve liked to help. Like partners do.”

Timmy’s lips open in a small, sad smile. He reaches out with one of his hands and Alex instantly takes it in his own, bringing it up to his own lips and kissing its palm before curling up on his lap again, resting his head on Timmy’s shoulder.

“I’m an idiot,” Timmy says.

“Yes,” he answers with a sigh, “But unfortunately I still love you.”

“Lucky me.”

“Yeah. So tell me about this thing.”

Timmy sighs, going back with his memory to a time he clearly doesn’t enjoy remembering much. “As I said, I was a little slower than my classmates in school. Not in the practical things, those were okay, but when it came to reading and writing I was a mess. I made so many mistakes, but when I was questioned I knew the rules, and when I heard a tale instead of reading it I could understand it easily, so Mr. Applethorne, my teacher, told dad it’d have been wise to have me seen by a doctor. And that’s how I was diagnosed.”

“This is so unbelievable…” Alex shakes his head, confused, “All your life. And you show no sign about it. If it hadn’t been for this speech you have to write, I would’ve never known.”

“That’s thanks to Leo, actually,” Timmy smiles warmly, his thoughts going back to a much better place.

Alex tilts his head up, searching for his eyes. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Timmy laughs, “I understand the surprise, but it really was all him. My dad was a little worried, you know, he’s always been so dedicated, but the idea of facing this terrified him. He thought if he couldn’t fix it I was risking, you know, missing a lot of opportunities and so on, struggling with this. But Leo—he was fearless,” he smiles brightly, “He took the challenge head on, he couldn’t be stopped. I think when I got diagnosed he was, like, in between his first book and the second. He had lots of time and no inspiration whatsoever, so he concentrated on me. He studied so much, updated on all the latest theories and study methods, and then he applied them on me to try out what could work and what couldn’t. We passed through everything, audiobooks, linking specific words to specific feelings and sensations, repeating and rewriting everything ten to fifty times… but the one thing that worked better than anything else was colored cards.”

Alex can’t help chuckling, and he does it, covering his mouth with his hand. “Colored cards?”

“Yes,” Timmy chuckles too, “He made them all by himself, specifically for me. Words, expressions, sometimes even whole sentences. Everything I struggled to get with all the other methods became manageable with the cards. They came in all colors and shapes so I never got bored, and he drew pictures on them. Sometimes he even used stickers to made them more appealing. I remember a series,” he chuckles again, “He used them to teach me birds. He had a few bird stickers, you know, the hawk, the magpie, the robin, the most common ones. Then when it was the time to teach me the most uncommon one, the proper stickers were over and he was left with a bunch of pigeon stickers, and he kept applying them to every cardboard,” he giggles, “The great tit was a pigeon, the bird of paradise was a pigeon, the cock-of-the-rock was a pigeon… until the birds were over and he realized he hadn’t made me a card for an actual pigeon. But the pigeon stickers were over, so he had to draw one for me, and it was ridiculous.” He chuckles one last time, letting out a relieved sigh as he gets to the end of the thin memory line he was following. “I still have that card in my old room. Hidden in an old history book. I take a look at it every time I go back home. It reminds me that there’s nothing that can’t be done if you persevere long enough.”

Something Alex happens to relate to a lot.

He smiles, tilting his head upwards and searching for Timmy’s lips. He’s a bit surprised, but he doesn’t withdraw. He accepts the kiss, receiving it at first, reciprocating it after but a second, and then he wraps his arms around Alex and squeezes him tight as he rests his forehead against his.

“Weren’t you angry at me?”

“I still am, but you’re so stupid and cute I can’t keep it up.”

“Hey, don’t call me stupid, I just told you I have a disability.”

“Oh, please,” Alex hits him on his nape and Timmy laughs, amused. “Thank you for telling me, though. You took your time but I’m glad you did it in the end.”

Timmy smiles again and kisses him on his lips once more. “Thank you for listening.”

“My pleasure. I actually think the story’s pretty useful – it holds the answer for your current situation, you know?”

Timmy blinks, offering him a confused gaze. Smiling tenderly, Alex kisses him and explains. “You just said it,” he says, “There’s nothing that can’t be done if you persevere long enough. We have eight months to get you ready for your speech. We can do it.”

Timmy laughs, hugging him once again. “Will you draw colored cards for me?”

“As many as you want, love."

Timmy chuckles, and kisses him on his neck. “Can we call Leo, at some point? Just to make sure we get it right by ourselves.”

Alex smiles, filled with tenderness to the brim. He kisses Timmy on his forehead and then slides off his lap and off the couch, standing in front of him, his legs slightly parted. “Perhaps not right away,” he says, suggestively pulling up the hem of his t-shirt, to show Timmy a glimpse of his belly button ring.

Timmy moistens his lips and then bites at the bottom one, his eyes, as always, magnetically drawn to the shiny jewel and its specific position on Alex’s body.

“Leo can wait,” he declares in the end, seconds before sweeping him off the floor and loading him up on his own shoulders.


End file.
